COMMISSIONER AMANDA FRITZ has been planning this for months—almost since the morning, this spring, when she jabbed at Mayor Charlie Hales (and the rest of her council colleagues) with a 15-minute speech lambasting their approval of a budget that cut tens of thousands in crucial anti-sex-trafficking funds.
And as of press time on December 3, Fritz was finally ready to make good on a promise she initially uttered in a long Mercury profile covering the first few months of her second term [“Can You Hear Me Now?” Feature, July 3].
“They can say no. But they’ll have to vote,” Fritz told me in late June. “And I can have another presentation on the evils of human trafficking in Portland. So I’ll get it. I will. I’ll get my money for human trafficking.”
And so she shall.
In council on Wednesday, December 4, Fritz was set to have a 90-minute presentation and hearing on the scourge of sex trafficking. At the end of it, she was going to call on her colleagues to approve $250,000 in one-time cash from city contingency money to help make a dent, at least for this year, in a problem that would actually cost far more to eradicate.
City hall sources tell me she’s assured to win that money—and that she would have done so even without a hearing that was so long it raised eyebrows when the agenda for this week’s council meeting was produced.
In fact, she could have done it last month, quietly and efficiently, when the council voted to approve its latest round of quarterly budget updates.
That’s what some sources say they were hoping might have happened—leery of another production wherein Fritz would be seen as showing up Hales and her three other male colleagues, Steve Novick, Nick Fish, and Dan Saltzman.
Of course, it was too late. As Willamette Week reported last month, Fritz had already announced her separate hearing on trafficking by the time, she says, Hales signaled his support for the full amount she was asking.
Or maybe it wasn’t too late. Hales’ office, for the record, says the mayor will wait until the hearing to make his decision public.
Spokesman Dana Haynes said—politely—that Hales was hoping the hearing would dwell more on details of the programs and less on reminding everyone that pimping and prostitution are the despicable acts that good people already know they are.
“Give us the stats to prove this is a good use of taxpayer money,” Haynes says. “If it’s going to be one of those meetings where lots and lots of people come up and say, ‘Sex trafficking is bad,’ I don’t know how value-added that would be for electeds.”
Fritz told me her presentation would have a bit of both. And she wouldn’t cop to any grudge politics.
She’ll be talking up proven programs and outcomes vetted through a task force she ran along with the county. But she’ll also be setting the stage for next year’s budget deliberation, when she’ll be back asking for even more money.
How the county and city continue splitting social services funding looms as a major question for Hales and his county counterparts.
To press her case, she’ll need a bully pulpit. And some TV cameras.
“It’s to keep the public’s awareness,” she says, “on the fact that we have by no means solved this awful problem.”
I’m sure throwing money at this problem will help.
Or at least employ someone so Fritz can feel better about it.
Sex trafficking? Like illegal aliens from Central America being smuggled in through Mexico to Arizona, then bussed into Portland, or Tibetan nationals kidnapped and shipped in containers to the Port of Portland? I suppose there could be legally sponsored blonde Ukranian immigrants here being coerced by the Russian mafia under threat of being sent back to the former Soviet bloc, but just exactly what the hell is Fritz talking about? How about scholarships for black teenage hookers from Albina?
Do it for the children. You don’t need to define the problem. Just say that there’s a problem and ask for lots of money. If anyone turns you down, simply accuse everybody of abusing a victim. Now, is Amanda Fritz saying that law enforcement isn’t doing it’s job in Portland, or is she saying that women don’t have the right to work in the profession of their choice?
Where is the journalism on this? How about a story on what this supposed sex trafficking is all about? Does this have anything to do with lack of security at the borders of the United States, or are we talking about organized crime from Chicago, New York or Las Vegas moving into Portland?
How does Fritz feel about me taking a little vacation to Pattaya, where the US pays millions of dollars to Thailand to keep prostitution illegal? Thailand is happy to oblige, so it has become socially taboo to refer to the bar girls as hookers. There, any nice girl who wants to meet new guys, go out on a date and make a few bucks can have an easy opportunity. The girls are perfectly free to come and go. They are enthusiastic, almost ecstatic to have some fun and profit. In Thailand and in the Philippines, women treat American men like rock stars. Nobody forces these gals to do anything, but their families often do appreciate the money that most of these ladies send home.
Also in Thailand, extremely young girls can be rented and abused, but not by foreigners. That takes place in slummy areas where no tourist would want to go or would even be welcomed. All the millions of dollars in US bribery does nothing to stop that despicable evil. Does this happen in Portland? If Amanda Fritz has ever defined the term sex trafficking and explained in detail the situation in Portland, I’ve never read or heard about it; certainly not in the Merc.
Sex Trafficking at Portland State University
http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impac…
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
Looking at the statistics, most of the girls are white, have never been abused, and not gang affiliated. It’s not clear how many in that group are addicted to drugs, but only about 40% of those in all groups are not, so statistically, it might be possible that none in this group are addicted to drugs.
I think it’s fair to conclude, that many if not most hookers in Portland, based on the study from Portland State University, are in the profession by choice. Therefore, the priority for law enforcement and social work, ought to be focused on blacks.
The misleading study from Portland State University attempts to redefine “Human Trafficking,” to preclude the actual true meaning, narrowing the term from global to local, thus obfuscating the importation of kidnap victims from Third World foreign countries into the United States. Portland State University advocates Globalism, and cannot tolerate the news of any events which might undermine that agenda.
Dr Christopher Carey and his grad student helper, Lena Teplitsky would have us believe that Human Trafficking is when a pimp sits home in his rat infested Albina apartment playing with his X-Box, and sends his girl out on a bus to SE 82nd Avenue. I wonder how well Professor Carey handles object relations with his young charge?
Such is a typical example of the sort of academic fraud that goes on at Portland State University. Honesty would be to title the study as of local street prostitution.
I suppose it would be too much effort to investigate the brothels. Or is the real purpose to erect a straw man in order to knock it down as if the problem has been solved. To get the public attention on street prostitution as if that were human trafficking, through a quarter million at the tip of the iceberg, then declare victory, leaving the sordid details of real human trafficking safely submerged in the underground sewers.
http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impac…
Christopher Carey, PhD, JD of Portland State University
and Lena Teplitsky, Portland State MPH Candidate
SUBJECT: Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) in the Portland Metro Area
Human Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or
maintaining of a person by means of force, fraud or coercion, for purposes of
involuntary servitude, debt bondage, slavery, or participation in the sex trade.
Carey turns Teplitsky out to do the dirty work, while he can sit back and claim plausible deniability when the slip shod study gets shot down. Talk about pimps prostituting innocent girls.